I smiled ruefully, not looking at him. ‘He’s had a go.’
‘I’d think it was impossible,’ Archie said. ‘He would have to put you underground to stop you.’
‘You’ve learned a lot about me, Archie,’ I said lazily. ‘I do like to win.’
He said, ‘So why aren’t you disappointed that Ellis’s Shropshire alibi can’t be broken?’
‘Because Ellis. set it up that way.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Ever since the Northampton yearling was attacked, Ellis’s lawyers have been putting it about that if Ellis had an unbreakable alibi for that night, which I bet he assured them he had, it would invalidate the whole Combe Bassett case. They put pressure on the Crown Prosecution Service to withdraw, which they’ve been tottering on the brink of doing. Never mind that the two attacks were separate, the strong supposition arose that if Ellis couldn’t have done one, then he hadn’t done the other.’
‘Of course,’ Norman said.
‘No,’ I contradicted. ‘He made for himself a positively unbreakable alibi in Shropshire, and he got someone else to go to Northampton.’
‘But no one would.’
‘One person would. And did.’
‘But who, Sid?’ Archie asked.
‘Gordon. His father.’
Archie and Norman both stiffened as if turned to pillars of salt.
The nerves in my right arm woke up. I pressed the magic button and they went slowly back to sleep. Brilliant. A lot better than in days gone by.
‘He couldn’t have done,’ Archie said in revulsion.
‘He did.’
‘You’re just guessing. And you’re wrong.’
‘No.’
‘But, Sid…’
‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘You, Charles and I have all been guests in his house. But he shot me last night. See it in The Pump.’
Archie said weakly, ‘But that doesn’t mean…’
‘I’ll explain,’ I said. ‘Give me a moment.’
My skin was sweating. It came and went a bit, now and then. An affronted body, letting me know.
‘A moment?’
‘I’m not made of iron.’
Archie breathed on a smile. ‘I thought it was tungsten?’
‘Mm.’
They waited. I said, ‘Gordon and Ginnie Quint gloried in their wonderful son, their only child. I accused him of a crime that revolted them. Ginnie steadfastly believed in his innocence; an act of faith. Gordon, however reluctantly, faced with all the evidence we gathered from his Land-Rover, must have come to acknowledge to himself that the unthinkable was true.’
Archie nodded.
I went on. ‘Ellis’s wretched persecution of me didn’t really work. Sure, I hated it, but I was still there, and meanwhile the time of the trial was drawing nearer and nearer. Whatever odium I drew onto myself by doing it, I was going to describe in court, with all the press and public listening, just how Ellis could have cut off the foot of Betty’s colt. The outcome of the trial — whether or not the jury found Ellis guilty, and whether or not the judge sent him to jail — that wasn’t the prime point. The trial itself, and all that evidence, would have convinced enough of the population of his guilt to destroy forever the shining-knight persona. Topline Foods couldn’t have — and, in fact, won’t be able to — use those diamond-plated round-the-world ads.’
I took a deep couple of lungfuls of air. I was talking too much. Not enough oxygen, not enough blood.
I said, ‘The idea of the Shropshire alibi probably came about gradually, and heaven knows to which of them first. Ellis received an invitation to the dance. The plan must have started from that. They saw it as the one effective way to stop the trial from taking place.’
Hell, I thought, I don’t feel well. I’m getting old.
I said, ‘You have to remember that Gordon is a farmer. He’s used to the idea of the death of animals being profitable. I dare say that the death of one insignificant yearling was as nothing to him when set beside the saving of his son. And he knew where to find such a victim. He would have to have long replaced the shears taken by the police. It must have seemed quite easy, and in fact he carried out the plan without difficulty.’
Archie and Norman listened as if not breathing.
I started again. ‘Ellis is many things, but he’s not a murderer. If he had been, perhaps he would have been a serial killer of humans, not horses. That urge to do evil — I don’t understand it, but it happens. Wings off butterflies and so on.’ I swallowed. ‘Ellis has given me a hard time, but in spite of several opportunities he hasn’t let me be killed. He stopped Yorkshire doing it. He stopped his father last night.’
‘People can hate until they make themselves ill,’ Archie nodded. ‘Very few actually murder.’
‘Gordon Quint tried it,’ Norman pointed out, ‘and all but succeeded.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘but that wasn’t to help Ellis.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘Have to go back a bit.’
I’m too tired, I thought, but I’d better finish it.
I said to Norman, ‘You remember that piece of rag you gave me?’
‘Yes. Did you do anything with it?’
I nodded.
‘What rag?’ Archie asked.
Norman outlined for him the discovery at Northampton of the lopping shears wrapped in dirty material.
‘The local police found the shears hidden in a hedge,’ I said, ‘and they brought them into the stud farm’s office while I was there. The stud farm’s owners, Miss Richardson and Mrs Bethany, were there, and so was Ginnie Quint, who was a friend of theirs and who had gone there to comfort them and sympathize. Ginnie forcibly said how much she despised me for falsely accusing her paragon of a son. For accusing my friend. She more or less called me Judas.’
‘Sid!’
‘Well, that’s how it seemed. Then she watched the policeman unwrap the shears that had cut off the yearling’s foot and, quite slowly, she went white… and fainted.’
‘The sight of the shears,’ Norman said, nodding.
‘It was much more than that. It was the sight of the material.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I spent a whole day… last Thursday, it seems a lifetime away… I chased all over London with that little piece of cloth, and I finished up in a village near Chichester.’
‘Why Chichester?’ Archie asked.
‘Because that filthy old cloth had once been part of some bed hangings. They were woven as a special order by a Mrs Patricia Huxford, who’s a doll of the first rank. She has looms in Lowell, near Chichester. She looked up her records and found that that fabric had been made nearly thirty years ago especially — and exclusively — for a Mrs Gordon Quint.’
Archie and Norman both stared.
‘Ginnie recognized the material,’ I said. ‘She’d just been giving me the most frightful tongue-lashing for believing Ellis capable of maiming horses, and she suddenly saw, because that material was wrapped round shears, that I’d been right. Not only that, she knew that Ellis had been in Shropshire the night Miss Richardson’s colt was done. She knew the importance of his alibi… and she saw — she understood — that the only other person who could or would have wrapped lopping shears in that unique fabric was Gordon. Gordon wouldn’t have thought twice about snatching up any old rag to wrap his shears in — and I’d guess he decided to dump them because we might have checked Quint’s shears again for horse DNA if he’d taken them home. Ginnie saw that Gordon had maimed the yearling. It was too big a shock… and she fainted.’
Archie and Norman, too, looked shocked.